Killgallon—what do your days look like?

[Ema]

Looking into Killgallon for DD6 and DD4 next year. DD6 struggles more with writing, while DD4 is naturally gifted in this area. Not sure where I would start them yet, but I guess what I am most interested in is what does your schedule look like? I see the 1-2-3 year plans in the online Teacher Book, but would like to have some guidance on what and how much you do in a day, how many days a week. Do the majority of you use only one book a year? For a 4th grader, would you start with the Story Grammar, or would the Sentence Composition? Thank you for your thoughts!

Edited March 12, 2021 by Ema

[caffeineandbooks]

Are 4 and 6 your DDs' ages or grades?  I would hesitate to jump into Killgallon with a four year old, even a gifted one, or with a reluctant 6 year old.

The yellow Sentence Composing for Elementary School was a bust with my fourth grader this year, though others on this board have successfully used it with that level.  He doesn't love creative writing and hasn't done any formal grammar, so the combination of "write a sentence about anything you like, paralleling the structure of this one" and no shared vocab to talk about adverbial phrases and subordinate clauses was too frustrating.  The sentences he did write were glorious, and I'm definitely not throwing it out, but we will come back to it in another year.  For reference, this kid thrived with WWE 1-3 and is now enjoying the simpler and more scaffolded sentence play in Writing and Rhetoric: Fable.

I see that the Killgallons have recently put out Getting Started with Elementary Sentence Composing, though I haven't seen any reviews and am not sure how different this book is from the yellow one.  Writing and Rhetoric is working well enough that I'm not looking elsewhere at this stage, but you may like to investigate Getting Started... further.  Whether a book is a year's work or a semester's would depend a lot on what else you had going on: you could do a page a day and finish in a bit more than a semester, or just do it once or twice each week and stretch it out for much longer.  

[Ema]

4 and 6 will be their grades next year, not ages. Sorry for that confusion. I am sitting here across from my sister and she said that the numbers are always ages. Here I have been thinking for years that they were kids grades! We used WWE 1 and 2 for both girls, are using WWE 3 for the third grader this year, and after having done 2 not great years of IEW with the older, I am just trying to build up her confidence and comfort ability with writing this year. I see some people say Killgallon is not a stand alone curriculum, while others that it can be. Do any use this as a stand alone? There is always so much to weed through. Just basically looking for what it looks like in the course of a day and week, since I have not found any “lesson plans,” so to speak.

Edited March 12, 2021 by Ema

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

My DS8 loves creative writing, has a decent grammar background (parts of speech, parts of a sentence, phrases, clauses), & enjoys playing around with sentence structure but is just now to the point where I think Killgallon Sentence Composing for Elementary would really be accessible & enjoyable.

The early chunking exercises are simple enough, but the composition is challenging. Are they confident writers? Do they acknowledge the weaknesses in their writing & want to improve them? 

I would definitely consider it a supplement, but a quality one - well worth the time & effort of weaving it in. 

Edited March 12, 2021 by Shoes+Ships+SealingWax

[8filltheheart]

I use the Killgallon books as fun supplementary done orally.  I am using the elementary SC with my 5th grader.  We read a sample together and she does 2 or 3 sentance constructions or creates 1 or 2 of her own about 2-3 times/week.

[SilverMoon]

We also used them as a mostly oral supplement, or for a break from their main writing program. If you did a good portion every day I'm not sure all three books would even last a whole school year. 

[Ema]

Great, supplement it is! I was rather dreading the idea of writing for this next year,  it this makes me more excited. I think I heard that Killgallon usually has a sale sometime in April, is this accurate? Any ideas of when that usually falls?